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The Tuzo TZG-4 gloves are budget Winter gloves. They retail at around £15 ($25) so I wasn’t expecting a lot from them in the first place, but I am pleasantly surprised. They have surpassed my expectations by a large amount and have held up after 2000 miles of winter riding, an accident and general rough treatment.

COMFORT [4/5]

The first time I put them on they were extremely thick and I was slightly afraid of riding with them as I didn’t have much throttle control. However after a couple of hours wearing and riding with them they were broke in well enough for my heart rate to drop a little. The gloves are very comfy and have moulded to my hand quite well. The lining is soft and warm (Thinsulate) and the adjusters work quite well too. Unfortunately they do not fit under my jacket as the gloves are on the large side; although they are perfectly fine over the top (even with heavy rain) as the draw string does an amazing job. One thing I did notice though was that in hot or even mild weather they get sticky quite fast.

WEATHER RESISTANCE [4/5]

As far as water resistance goes they are excellent. My hands are always dry whatever the amount of rainfall. They do get soggy if your handlebars are wet before you ride but this can be expected from any pairs of gloves. The warmth factor is not that great, once the gloves are broken in the lining becomes quite thin and after about 20 minutes of riding at an average of around 35 MPH (some 70 MPH in there though) your fingers become cold. The rest of my hands are fine but anymore than 35 minutes of riding at outer city speeds and my fingers will start to feel it quite badly. These are at an air temperature of around 0C (36F) however and not that many people will be riding in conditions colder than that for longer than that. I found that a pair of inner gloves works wonders but this jacks the price up to around £30 ($55) so why not just buy a more expensive pair in the first place you may be thinking?

PROTECTION [3/5]

As with all motorcycle gear one of the main aspects is protection against a possible accident. There is no hard armour in the glove at all, yet there are raised section at all the joints in the fingers and a large padded section on the knuckles. The palm is leather which is a good sign and all of the major layers are double stitched. I had an accident in these involving a taxi driver who u-turned in the middle of the road and they held up fine then although it was a relatively low speed collision. I am unsure to how they would fare at a high speed impact but am confident that they would be sufficient.

LOOKS [4/5]

I find that the gloves look quite nice… as far as winter gloves go. The 3M reflective piping is a nice feature as is the red and silver sewn logo. The gloves are a very deep navy blue and in the real world look almost black. They go with anything to my racing leathers through to my Textile winter suit.

QUALITY [2/5]

The Tuzo TZG-4 are not the best quality in the world, but what do you expect for the price of a DVD? In fact I have had to take them back to the dealer once as the first time I opened them and put them on the plastic buckle to adjust the cuff fitting snapped straight off. Since I got the new pair I haven’t even bothered to touch the buckle again as it does look rather fragile -although this is not needed anyway. The material quality is decent and a few of the stitches have frayed. The lining is proper Thinsulate however and the textile outer is Hippora so the quality isn’t that bad.

VALUE [5/5]

In terms of value these gloves are excellent, for £15 ($25) you can’t really go far wrong. The quality is ok if you ignore the buckles, protection is adequate and the materials used are branded and do an ok job.

OVERALL [4/5]

The overall verdict on these then is that they are a great low cost winter glove. Have them for one season and then get rid of them if you ride through the winter or purchase them for those odd chilly days. I can’t really recommend them for touring as they get hot far too quick in temperatures above 10C (50F). However what I do recommend them for is anyone who rides in cold weather and is on a tight budget. These will do you just fine until the money starts rolling in.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 9:25 PM and is filed under Motorcycles, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.